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Bibliography on: Classical Genetics: Sex Determination

Robert J. Robbins is a biologist, an educator, a science administrator, a
publisher, an information technologist, and an IT leader and manager who
specializes in advancing biomedical knowledge and supporting education
through the application of information technology.
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RJR: Recommended Bibliography
20 Jan 2019 at 01:34Created:

Classical Genetics: Sex Determination

Scitable:
In humans and many other animal species, sex is determined by specific chromosomes.
The first inkling that sex chromosomes were unique from all other chromosomes
came from experiments conducted by German biologist Hermann Henking in 1891. While
studying sperm formation in
wasps, Henking saw that some wasp sperm cells had 12 chromosomes, while others
had only 11. Moreover, while observing the stages of meiosis that formed these
sperm cells, Henking noticed that the mysterious twelfth chromosome looked different
from all the others. He thus named this chromosome the "X element," to represent its
unknown nature. nce that supported this hypothesis.
About 10 years after Henking's studies, American zoologist C. E. McClung began
extensive research into the idea that the X element must have something to do
with sex determination. First, McClung asserted that this strange chromosome be
called the "accessory chromosome," because it appeared to have a separate purpose
compared to the other chromosomes. Next, he decided to undertake a wide comparative
study of spermatogenesis not just in insects but in many different organisms,
including spiders and mice. While observing sperm generation in grasshoppers,
McClung noted that the accessory chromosome did not behave as the other chromosomes
did during the first meiotic division. Specifically, this "twelfth chromosome" was
not distributed equally to the four sperm cells that arose from one grasshopper
spermatogonium; instead, it was present in only half of them. This consistent pattern
of segregation in the spermatogenesis of many different organisms caused McClung to
speculate that there must be some fundamental reason for the generation of two types of
sperm cells. McClung thought about the consequences of this 50/50 distribution of the
accessory chromosome, and he pondered how this distribution probably resulted in two
different kinds of zygotes. He also noted that there was really only one characteristic
that varied among zygotes of many different species in 50/50 proportions, and that
characteristic was sex.

Created with PubMed® Query:
1890:1953[PDAT] AND ("sex-determination" OR "sex determination" OR "sex chromosome" OR "X chromosome" OR "Y chromosome") NOT pmcbook NOT ispreviousversion

Robbins holds BS, MS, and PhD degrees in the life sciences. He served
as a tenured faculty member in the Zoology and Biological Science
departments at Michigan State University. He is currently exploring
the intersection between genomics, microbial ecology, and biodiversity
— an area that promises to transform our understanding of the
biosphere.

Educator

Robbins has extensive experience in college-level education: At MSU he
taught introductory biology, genetics, and population genetics. At
JHU, he was an instructor for a special course on biological database
design. At FHCRC, he team-taught a graduate-level course on the
history of genetics. At Bellevue College he taught medical
informatics.

Administrator

Robbins has been involved in science administration at both the
federal and the institutional levels. At NSF he was a program officer
for database activities in the life sciences, at DOE he was a program
officer for information infrastructure in the human genome project. At
the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, he served as a vice
president for fifteen years.

Technologist

Robbins has been involved with information technology since writing
his first Fortran program as a college student. At NSF he was the first
program officer for database activities in the life sciences. At JHU
he held an appointment in the CS department and served as director of
the informatics core for the Genome Data Base. At the FHCRC he was VP
for Information Technology.

Publisher

While still at Michigan State, Robbins started his first publishing
venture, founding a small company that addressed the short-run
publishing needs of instructors in very large undergraduate classes.
For more than 20 years, Robbins has been operating The Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project,
a web site dedicated to the digital publishing of critical works in
science, especially classical genetics.

Speaker

Robbins is well-known for his speaking abilities and is often called
upon to provide keynote or plenary addresses at international
meetings. For example, in July, 2012, he gave a well-received keynote address at the
Global Biodiversity Informatics Congress, sponsored by GBIF and held
in Copenhagen. The slides from that talk can be seen
HERE.

Facilitator

Robbins is a skilled meeting facilitator.
He prefers a participatory approach, with
part of the meeting involving dynamic breakout groups, created by the
participants in real time: (1) individuals propose breakout groups;
(2) everyone signs up for one (or more) groups; (3) the groups
with the most interested parties then meet, with reports from each
group presented and discussed in a subsequent plenary session.

Designer

Robbins has been engaged with photography and design since the 1960s,
when he worked for a professional photography laboratory. He now
prefers digital photography and tools for their precision and
reproducibility. He designed his first web site more than 20 years
ago and he personally designed and implemented this web site.
He engages in graphic design as a hobby.

This is a must read book for anyone with an interest
in invasion biology. The full title of the book lays out the author's
premise — The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature's Salvation.
Not only is species movement not bad for ecosystems, it is the
way that ecosystems respond to perturbation — it is the way ecosystems heal.
Even if you are one of those
who is absolutely convinced
that invasive species are actually "a blight, pollution, an epidemic, or a cancer
on nature", you should read this book to clarify your own thinking. True
scientific understanding never comes from just interacting with those
with whom you already agree.
R. Robbins

Reprints and preprints of publications, slide presentations,
instructional materials, and data compilations written or
prepared by Robert Robbins. Most papers deal with
computational biology, genome informatics, using information
technology to support biomedical research, and related matters.

ResearchGate is a social networking site for scientists and
researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and
find collaborators. According to a study by
Nature
and an
article in
Times Higher Education
, it is the largest academic
social network in terms of active users.